Anchoring gender perspectives in research: with this aim in mind, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is promoting gender denomination for professorships. The University of Excellence Bonn is now receiving a new junior professorship for female immunity at the Faculty of Medicine from the programme. The junior professorship is intended to expand the research focus on immunology at the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) to include important issues relating to gender and gender-specific aspects in immunology and women's health.
With the newly approved junior professorship, the already excellent research in the field of immunology at the University of Bonn will be expanded to include the strategic focus on female immunity. "Bonn is a centre for cutting-edge immunological research. Together with partners from the UKB, the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2, the new junior professorship will link research approaches on the role of sex, gender and female health with immunology and provide new insights into immunodiversity," says Prof Bernd Weber, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Acting Chairman of the UKB.
Differences between men and women in the immune response have been little researched to date
Whether bacteria, viruses or fungi: our immune system recognises foreign invaders in our body and fights them. However, how the immune system reacts to intruders is different in men and women: "Women generally show stronger immune responses, which often proves beneficial in the case of infections, but they also have stronger reactions to vaccines and immunotherapies and a higher risk of autoimmune diseases," explains ImmunoSensation2 member Prof Dr Joachim Schultze from the DZNE.
Despite these initial findings on the different immune responses, women and women-specific health information, for example on menstruation, contraceptive use and menopause, are still underrepresented and under-researched in immunological research. This has negative consequences for women's health: For example, diseases that lead to different symptoms in women than in men are diagnosed later; medical therapies respond differently - or worse - in women than in men.
This is where the new Junior Professorship for Female Immunity comes in. One of its aims is to investigate how immune responses change during the menstrual cycle and menopause. In teaching, the professorship will help to raise awareness of gender-specific differences in the immune system, particularly in the "Medical Immunosciences and Infection" and "Immunobiology and Systems Immunology" degree programmes.
"It is wonderful that, thanks to the funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science, we are now able to establish a W1 professorship at the University of Bonn dedicated exclusively to immunological gender research. The professorship will make an important contribution to uncovering gender-specific differences in immune reactions and applying this knowledge clinically," says ImmunoSensation2 member Prof Dr Irmgard Förster, Vice-Rector for Equal Opportunities and Diversity, together with the Central Equal Opportunities Officer, Gabriele Alonso Rodriguez, who is delighted about the first professorship with an explicit focus on gender research in Bonn.
About the funding programme
With the aim of strengthening gender and gender studies in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of Culture and Science (MKW) is funding the establishment of gender (sub)denominations for professorships at the state universities in the state. The measure is aimed at an interdisciplinary institutional anchoring of gender perspectives, particularly in subject areas in which this perspective has so far been underdeveloped. The MWK funds the professorship for a period of three years with up to 450,000 euros; at the end of the funding period, the university undertakes to continue the respective specialisation for at least another three years after the end of the funding.
Contact
Vice Rector for Equal Opportunities and Diversity
University of Bonn
Phone: +49 228 73 5886
E-mail: prorektorin.foerster@uni-bonn.de
